A technical educational institute,which will train candidates in vocational skills that are in great demand from the mechanical engineering industry in the state,is one of the proposals being considered by a committee headed by IIT,Bombay alumni. The IIT Bombay Alumni Association (IITBAA),which is celebrating its 10th anniversary,is looking at several proposals mooted by former students,which can benefit society and the institute. Currently,two individuals run a national training centre at Murbad near Kalyan. It develops technicians,machinists to feed the mechanical engineering industry in the Mumbai region. The successful candidates are awarded a certificate,which is supposed to be in great demand by the industry. The students are picked up from the nearby villages. The proposal is modelled on this institute, said Bakul Desai,director of fundraising at IITBAA. All proposals are being discussed at length. We are still in the process of receiving other proposals from alumni. We will implement only those proposals which are approved by IITBAA, said Desai,also a member of the board of directors,IITBAA. Yet another proposal is to replicate the Village Knowledge Centre (VKC) being run by an IIT-B alumnus in Bangalore. Under the initiative,villages are adopted and made IT-enabled. The VKCs act as nodal centres for knowledge connectivity where villagers learn to operate computers and farmers are taught new ways of farming and transacting crop prices on the Net,besides offering facilities like Net banking and railway booking. From creating a language lab at IIT-B,where students weak in English can learn at their own speed and others can use it to learn new languages in their spare time,another proposal looks at establishing a centre for product development. The idea is that a chair can be created which will institutionalise the process of product adaptation,innovation and improvement which has the potential of saving a huge amount of foreign exchange for the country. The products developed through this initiative will have an immediate economic spin-off through licencing of product to manufacturing/ marketing organisations, said another alumni. The IITBAA is also exploring whether a revenue model can be created for socially relevant projects of IIT-Bs Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas and the association can act as a bridge between the corporate sector and the Centre to attract funds. Another suggestion is to consider helping an IIT-B project through funds and volunteers,which is looking at providing a platform for anyone to contribute to translating educational material,normally available in English or Hindi,into every Indian language Further,IITBAA is looking at an alumni-alumni mentorship programme where younger alumni are mentored by older ones,like in most western universities. It is a logical corollary to alumni-student mentorship programme,which saw around 700 final-year students of IIT-B being mentored by 70 alumni on Sunday to help them make informed decisions. A revamp of the job board by making it more proactive,has also being mooted. It includes a database of alumni. It has been suggested that we can ask headhunters to spell out their specific requirement for positions and check from the database eligible candidates who fulfil the criteria. We then ask the candidates about their willingness to consider the offer,arrange for the interviews and finalise the selection process, said Desai.
